What s New to Version 2.0

SU Animate 2.0 Guide What s New to Version 2.0...1 Install...2 Cameras, Curves & Paths...3 Use a Camera path to create a simple walk thru effect...8 Animating Objects with Target Groups...9 Using four new features in SU Animate 2.0...11 Exporting the Animation...13 Make Batch Files...13 Fillet program...14 Quick Description of the Demo files...14 Some Tips...15 SU Animate is a simple animation plug-in for Google SketchUp Pro 6 Windows and Mac. Even though the ruby files are encrypted users have reported that SU Animate will work on Google SketchUp 6 (free version). The program will animate groups along a path by creating scenes automatically. You can also create walk thru animations by animating SketchUp s camera along a given path. You can then export the scenes to an AVI file using SketchUp s export animation feature. SU Animate also has a feature that allows you to create.skp files of each scene. This batch file feature is handy for customers that have SU Podium and want to create animations from their rendered images. What s New to Version 2.0 SU Animate 2.0 introduces a several new, powerful features. Delay is a powerful new feature that allows the user to delay a specific path and any groups assigned to that path for a set number of scenes. Simply type in the number of scenes the group(s) is desired to delay for and update the attributes. This feature will allow much more complex animations such as assemblies. One group can be animated on more than one path. Used in tangent with Delay, now you can animate one group, on more than one path allowing for animations such as up and down, clock wise and counter-clock wise motion of one group. More than one group can be animate on a single path. With 2.0, you can animate several groups on the same path. For example, place the camera and an object on the same path. This will give the effect of the camera following an object in the 1

animation. New User Interface. The web dialog interface makes assigning groups or camera or both to paths, easy. Repeat allows you to create an animation that have paths that repeat themselves within an animation. This various flash tutorial will explain the important new features in SU Aniamte 2.0. Locate this on www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ and click on What s New in Version 2.0. Install Click on the SU Animate 2.0 program. This will install the evaluation version of SU Animate. (Mac users copy the files to - in the Library/Application Support/ Google SketchUp 6/ Plugins folder) Like Google SketchUp Pro 6, you can activate the evaluation version so it becomes a full commercial version. Make sure SketchUp 6 is closed before installing SU Animate. Once the program is installed, open SketchUp and go to the Plugins menu and pick SU Animate. Click on Register if you have purchased SU Animate and want to activate the program as a full commercial version. If you do not enter a serial number, you will have 10 days to evaluate the program. After installing, take a look at the contents of the \Program Files\ Google \ Google SketchUp 6 \ Plugins folder. (Note: Mac version is installed in the Library\Application Support\Google SketchUp 6\ Plugins folder.) The file related to SU Animate is: SU Animate.rb There is also a new sub-folder, SU Animate, in the Plugins folder. This SU Animate folder also has two sub-folders, scripts an uninst The files in the \Plugins\SU Animate\ root folder are sample SketchUp models that have scenes that have already been created by SU Animate. These are: Stage Forklift demo.skp Pull Forklift out of Van demo.skp Lift Sea Van demo.skp Gear 1 demo.skp Gear 2 demo.skp Test1-14.skp files Bookcase.skp files 2

To examine these models, open these files in SketchUp. The paths and group assignments and scenes have already been made. All you need to do is to run the animation from SketchUp s View, Animation, Play menu. For the newer examples of SU Animate 2.0, the files test 1 through 14 and bookcase, the scenes have not been created. You should use SU Animates command, MakeScene first and then run the animation from SketchUp s View, Animation, Play menu. Thesee examples and many others are also displayed onwww.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ as Flash files. Go to www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ to see flash based video tutorials. The files that are installed are \Plugins\SU Animate\Scripts contains the.rbs scripts that run SU Animate, the folder should include: attributemaker, curvemaker, fillet, license, and pagemaker. The file that are installed are \Plugins\SU Animate\Uninst folder contain the uninstall file. Cameras, Curves & Paths This section will introduce how to create a very simple walk thru animation along a straight userdefined path. Go to http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ and click on the Make Path flash tutorial to get a jump start on this example. The SU Animate uses one or more paths to define how an animation is created. A path can be any open or closed curve defined by the user. The path can simply be a straight line or a complex group of lines and curves. For starters we will define a simple path that the camera will follow. The camera will be moving along the path to create a walk thru effect. 1. 2. 3. Open SketchUp and draw a 3D box. Draw a line about 10ft long (305 cm) along side the 3D box. It is easiest to draw your paths on SketchUp s ground plane at first. However, you will need to move your path off of any surface before the animation is created. Right-click on the line and select the Divide option (see Figure 1.) and divide the line into 30 segments (see Figure 2). The segment value can be typed in the VCB or selected by dragging to the desired size and clicking. A single line cannot have more than 100 segments so your segment length will depend on how long the line is. 3

Figure 1 Right-click to bring up the right-click menu to divide the line into segments. NOTE: SU Animate translates one segment into one scene. Think of segments as your frames in a video. The more segments you have, the more scenes you will have creating a smoother animation. Figure 2: After clicking the divide option, type 30 into the VCB or move the mouse to get the desired segment length/amount. 4. Select the line and all of its segments, right-click on the selected segments and select the Create Curve from Edges option from the bottom of the right-click menu (see Figure 3). This option makes the curve that will be the path for your camera. 4

Figure 3: After selecting all of the segments in the path, select Create Curve from Edges. 5. Right-click on the path. Two new options are available at the bottom of the right-click menu: Reverse curve direction and Assign Attributes. See Figure 4. Reverse curve direction: This switches which end of the curve the camera will start on. The camera will default to the starting point of your original curve. Assign Attributes: When picked, a window will open that allows the user to choose what group to assign to the path. For now, the menu will only have the option to select the camera. 5

Figure 4: Assign attributes to a path. 6. Select the Assign Attributes option. From the Assign Attributes menu that pops up, check the box next to camera. Figure 5: Group selection window 7. The animation will have the camera follow each line segment at the height of the path. Therefore move the path up the blue axis to a height you prefer (see Figure 6). For instance 6

you might want the camera to be about eye level relative to your model. Figure 6 Using the blue axis inference, move your path to the desired height. IMPORTANT ITEMS TO CONSIDER BEFORE CREATING THE ANIMATION: It is very important to save your model before creating scenes. Once you create scenes, the only way to undo the scene creation is to use File>Revert to revert the model back to the last time it was saved. This is also a good time to go to SketchUp s View menu and select Animation>Settings. Change the default settings of Scene Transitions and Scene Delay both to 0. If you change these values before saving you will not have to change them every time you revert the model. Also make sure the Layers, Entity Info, Materials, Scenes or any other windows within SketchUp are minimized if not closed. Having these windows open will drastically increase scene creation time as well as slow down the animations when they are played within SketchUp. It should also be noted that paths can be put into layers and these layers hidden before the creation of scenes or batch files. Turning off the layers containing the paths will keep the paths hidden from the animation. 8. 9. From the Plugins menu, select Make Scenes (see Figure 7). The script will pop up a window with as many scenes as you have line segments in the path. The program also adds one additional scene. Click OK to create the scenes. Any extra scenes added by the user will just be a repetition of the final scene of the animation. If you make an animation with 200+ scenes, the script will 7

stop every 200 scenes to alert you of the progress. You can click OK to continue or Cancel to interrupt the scene creation process and animate what has been made so far. Figure 7 Select the Make Scenes option from the Plugins menus in the menu bar 10. To see the animation you created to to SketchUp s View menu, Pick Animation and then Play. Use a Camera path to create a simple walk thru effect. We will now create a more complex path to create a simple walk thru animation. 1. Start a new model and create a 3D box. Create a path that goes around the corner of box. The path should be comprised of 2 lines and an arc. (See Figure 8) Figure 8 Create a curve from your three entities 2. To make the camera turn smoothly around the corner, create an arc between the two line 8

segments. (Alternatively, you could create two straight lines that intersect and use Fillet program to create a arc between the two perpendicular lines. More about Fillet program below.) 3. The lines and arc need to be divided into several segments so that you will have enough scenes to make the animation interesting. For instance, divide each line and the arc into ten segments equally. 4. After all the segments have been divided equally, select all the segments and create a curve from the edges as we did in the first tutorial. 5. Apply steps 5-9 of the first section to this example. You should have a walk thru animation that shows the camera turning the corner of the box. Animating Objects with Target Groups The real power of SU Animate is the ability to animate groups in SketchUp. Upon completion of this section, you will be able to animate any group along a path to create a key frame like animation. Before starting this section, it is recommended that you go to http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ and click on Assign Group flash tutorial to view this video tutorial. Open the file: Pull Forklift out of Van demo.skp located in the /Su animate folder. This file model already has a path created. 1. Left click on the fork lift and look at its Entity Info. You will notice that the name of the group is target. The object that you want to animate must be a group and the group must have a name. If you name the group target the camera will follow the group as it is animated along a path. In this example, the fork lift is a group and it is named target. Figure 9 Create a group to animate. In this case call it target. 9

2. Notice that there is already a path created behind the forklift. The forklift has been placed at the point of origin of the path and will move in the direction the path was draw. Because the fork lift group is named target the camera will follow it. Reversing the direction of the curve will change which direction a group will move. Remember that the group must be at the correct end of the path to attain the desired movement. Like the camera, a group can be animated to follow a curved or angled path. 3. Right-click on the path. Notice that in the brackets next to assign attributes, it lists that the group for the path is target and there is no delay and no repeat. The path has already been assigned to the target group (forklift). When creating your own animations, you will have to assign the path to a named group (see Figure 10). The group will move along the defined path when animated. Figure 10: Attribute selection window NOTE: All the rules before making scenes still apply when animating a group along a path. It is also important to note that your named group will move in the direction that the original curve was created in. If your group is moving the opposite way than expected, reverse the direction of the curve. Also note if in the animation, you want the camera to follow the movement of the group, name the group target. 4. If you named the group target, position the camera where you would like it to be as the forklift moves along the path. Camera placement matters since the camera will stay in a fixed location and rotate to watch your target move and keep it in view. 5. Select the Make Scenes option from the Plugins menu. 6. View>Animation>Play to see your target move along the path. 7. Try making your own group path animation. Make a new file and create a simple group and a path for the group to follow. If you want the camera to follow the group as it is animated along 10

a path, make sure you name the group, target. 8. Take a look at some of the other sample.skp files located in the /su animate folder. These samples have paths and groups already made so all you have to do is to Make Scenes and play the animation. Note: Paths can be hidden by putting them in a layer and turning the layer containing the path off before creating the scenes. This includes camera paths and target paths. Using four new features in SU Animate 2.0 Delay SU Animate 2.0 introduces an important new feature called Delay. Version 2.0 also provides a user interface for assigning groups to paths and provides a repeat function. It is recommended that you go to http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/ and click on What s New in Version 2.0 and take a look at the Version 2.0 flash tutorial. With the Delay feature, you can assign a delay variable to each path. The delay is measured in a number of scenes. So a delay of 10 would mean a delay of 10 scenes. If one path is assigned a delay of 10, this means that the path s animation will not run until frame or scene 10. The easiest example of using Delay is shown in test1.skp and test2.skp in your \Plugins\SU Animate\ root folder. Open test1.skp. Open the file and notice how there are five groups and five paths. Each path is divided into 10 segments. If you right click on any path and pick Assign Attributes, you can see the delay setting on the path. The path furthest to the left has a delay setting of 0. The group that is assigned to this path is 1-block. The path next to it is assigned a delay of 10 and the group to animate is b-block and so on. This means that b-block animation will not start until frame or scene 10 of the whole animation. Run Make Scenes on this model. 51 scenes will be created. Then play the animation using SketchUp s View, Animation, Play menu. Notice how b-block, c-block, d-block and e-block only animate after the previous block s animation is completed. To examine the full potential of Delay with other 2.0 features, take a look at Bookcase.skp. When you open this model, you wil notice, the path layers have been turned off, so turn the Path layers on to see how the attributes were assigned to each path. Run Make Scenes and play the animation. Both these animations are relatively large so be aware it may take a few minutes to complete creating all the scenes. After making the scenes, play the animations. Notice how complex you can make 11

animations with the Delay feature and other new features. One group on more than one path With version 2.0, you can apply one group to more than one path. The best way to examine this is to open test 3.skp and take a look at how the paths are set up. In this case three boxes are animated up one path, down another path. Open the file, and you can see the path are exposed. Right click on any or all of the paths and check assign attributes to see how attributes have been assigned. Notice that each box has been assigned to more than one path and the Delay feature has also been turned on, each second path. Test 4.skp and Test 5.skp are variations of this theme but with test 4.skp, a closed path is used and test 5.skp uses both closed and open paths. Repeat Repeat allows the user to set a path to repeat itself. The path and associated group will continue to animate until all the frames or scenes in the entire animation are completed. (Note: SketchUp repeats the entire animation sequence as a default. Be aware that SU Animate s Repeat is NOT the same as how SketchUp automatically repeats the entire animation sequence.) For example, SU Animate s Repeat, allows you to create a path with a few segments. Then the path s animation will be repeated for as many frames there are in the entire animation. If the path is an open curve, the animation will be repeated, starting at the end point of the original curve. In version 1.x, closed path such as circles, repeated themselves by default. In version 2.0, you must assign the repeat function to closed or open paths for the path s animation to repeat itself. To understand Repeats effect, open test 6.skp located in your \Plugins\SU Animate\ root folder. Right click on the curve and click on Assign Attributes. Notice that in the dialog box, the path s Repeat function has been turned on. Next, right click on the curve again and look at the Entity Info. Notice that there are 36 segments to this curve. This would normally mean the animation will have 36 scenes or frames as a default. Next go to Make Scenes. When prompted for the number of Frames, enter 72 (twice 36). Press OK and Play the animation. Notice how the box moves past the end of the curve and repeats the animation in the same manner as if following an invisible curve. Try the examples, Test 13.skp and Test1 4.skp. Remember to enter more Frames than the path entity segments have. Many groups along the same path This new and useful feature allows you to animate many groups on the same path simultaneously. 12

You can assign more than one group on the same path using SU Animate s 2.0 user interface. Good examples of this new feature are shown in test 7.skp, test 8.skp and test 9.skp. If you open test 7.skp, examine the paths by right clicking on each path and picking assigning attributes. You can see that more than one group has been assigned to each path. The example text 9.skp shows that you can assign a camera and a group to the same path to get the effect of the camera following a group along a path. Please take a look at examples 10 through 14 and the bookcase example, to review using a combination of the new features. Go to http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/index2.php to view the Flash video files of each example. Exporting the Animation Once you have created a satisfactory animation, you can use SketchUp to export all the scenes to an AVI file. (Mac version will create a.mov file as a default). AVI file is a audio/ video standard format that can be read by many Multi-Media programs like Windows Media or Quicktime. AVI files and can be converted to smaller footprint video files like Windows Media Video (WMV) or other formats by using conversion programs such as CAMTASIA from TechSmith To export your animation in SketchUp: 1. Go to the File pull down menu and pick Export. 2. From the Export menu pick Animation. 3. From the Animation dialog box you can decide what to name and where to save the.avi file. The options button shows you various AVI options. Make Batch Files The Make Batch File feature in SU Animate 1.1 works just like Make Scenes. However, it can not be used after you create scenes. It must be used before making scenes. The Make Batch File features is accessed from the SU Animate menu. Click on Make Batch Files. You will be then prompted for Number of Frames, just like when you Make Scenes. Next, you will be prompted for a file name. Save the file as a SketchUp file. For example, name it Animation-Test.skp. Make sure you include the extension.skp. After naming the file, click Save. Make Batch Files will then create the same number of files as there are frames in your animation. Each.skp file name created will include a number that is in sequence with the number of frames starting with 1. For example, if you have 80 frames and save the file as Animation-Test.skp, the program will create 80.skp files starting with Animation-Test01.skp to Animation-Test80.skp. What s the advantage of Make Batch Files? Some Podium and other rendering program users may find this utility to be handy in creating rendered animations. 13

Fillet program The fillet program is a handy SketchUp 6 utility that will allow you to quickly make fillets between two straight lines. The fillet program rounds the edges of two connecting lines with an arc and therefore will help make your animation paths smoother. To use the Fillet program, first select two or more connecting edges. Then go to the SketchUp Tools menu and pick Fillet. Next you will be prompted for a radius of an arc and the number of segments you want the arc to have. When you hit enter, you will see a rounded corner between two or more connecting lines. The fillet utility gets loaded each time you load SketchUp because the fillet.rbs is installed in the \Google SketchUp 6\ Plugins\ folder. Quick Description of the Demo files Each of the demo SketchUp files that are installed in the \suanimate folder, have paths and groups already created. To view them all you have to do is run Make Scenes. You will notice that after Make Scenes has been completed, you will be viewing the last scene of the sequence. To play the animation with SketchUp, go to View, Animation and Play. 1. Stage Forklift demo This model was created by Westinghouse and was donated to us for use as a demonstration. In this model the path is curved and the fork lift will follow the curved path. 2. Pull Forklift out of Van demo This model was also created by Westinghouse and was donated to us for use as a demonstration. This model has a long straight path and the animation will show the fork lift coming backing out of the van. Notice where the camera is placed and how it follows the fork lift. 3. Lift Sea Van demo This model was also created by Westinghouse and was donated to us for use as a demonstration. This model will show a crate being lifted from the back of a truck. 4. Gear 1 demo This model is of two spur gears rotating and providing an illusion of rotating each other. The paths are hidden on the path layer. 14

Notice is this demo that two circular paths are used. If a path is an enclosed circle, SU Animate will automatically rotate the group assigned to the path on its axis. The model will create 177 scenes. It may take some time. 5. Gear 2 demo Similar to Gear 1 demo, this model has two spur gears rotate on their axis and a camera rotating around the two rotating spur gears. Some Tips 6. Test1 demo Test1.skp file is a simple example of the new delay feature in SU Animate 2.0. Open the file and notice how there are five groups and five paths. Each path is divided into 10 segments. If you right click on any path and pick Assign Attributes, you can see the delay setting on the path. So the path furthest to the left as a delay setting of 0 and the group to animate is a-block. The path next to it is assigned a delay of 10 (segments) and the group to animate is b-block and so on. Run Make Scenes on this model. 51 scenes will be created. Then play the animation using SketchUp s View, Animation, Play command. Notice how b-block, c-block, d-block and e-block only animates after the previous block s animation is completed. Also, notice how the position of the block are important. If the blocks had been positioned at the beginning of each individual path, the animation would look a lot different. 7. Other examples Test2.skp demonstrates both Delay and Repeat. Notice how in Version 2.0 you must assign Repeat to a closed path. Test3.skp demonstrates the features of assigning one group to several paths. Test4.skp demonstrates the features of assigning one group to several paths. Test5.skp Complex example of ssigning one group to several paths. Test6.skp simple example of Repeat. Make sure you create more Frames than there are segments in the path entity. Test7 through 9.skp you can assign more than one group to a path Tests 10-14 more complex examples of using various new features to version 2.0 1. Before creating an animation with SU Animate in an existing SketchUp model make a 15

copy of the file and rename it. Create the animation in the new file. If there are any existing scenes in the new file, delete them. 2. Hide your path before Making Scenes. Paths can be hidden by putting them in a unique layer and turning the layer containing the path off before creating the scenes. Otherwise, your animation will include the path entities. 3. Close extra Windows to make the animation smooth. Make sure that the SketchUp windows for Layers, Entity Info, Materials, Scenes or any other windows within SketchUp are minimized if not closed. Having these windows open will increase scene creation time as well as slow down the animations when they are played within SketchUp. 16